Asia

The Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign is holding a meeting in commemoration with Ted Grant on 20th August at the Lahore Press club at 4pm. Speakers include Manzoor Ahmed, Munno Bhai, Khawar Naeem Hashmi, Javed Shaheen, Karamat Ali, Saeed Qazi and Lal Khan.

These are convulsive and testing times. After more than three decades, history is once again on the move. Events have acquired a ferocious velocity. People are at the same time spectators and victims of this brutalizing capitalism. The economies grow but the living standards of the masses fall. The masses are yearning for change.

There is a lot of hype in the media about India’s booming economy. The truth is that this affects a small minority of the 1.2 billion population. Some 300 million Indians survive on less than $1 a day. In this situation there is revolutionary ferment taking place that will shake India to its foundation.

Recent rioting in Kabul after a US military vehicle collided with civilian vehicles killing dozens has highlighted once again the dilemma facing the imperialists. Resentment at the presence of foreign troops is growing among the people as Taliban activities also spread.

The march towards capitalism is not a simple straightforward process. There are opposition voices within the bureaucracy, but more importantly capitalist development has created a massive working class and this is now being expressed in the growing level of strikes.

State planning has broken down in China, but the state still plays a key role in providing capital investment and in nurturing major Chinese corporations whose role is to compete with the foreign multinationals and guarantee that important economic interests remain in Chinese hands.

Nearly thirty years have passed since Deng first introduced his “market reforms”. What started as an attempt to stimulate growth within a planned economy has ended up by establishing capitalist relations in the Chinese economy. How did all this happen and where is China going today?

Faced with a mass revolutionary movement the king of Nepal has been forced to reinstate parliament. Now the movement is being channelled towards some form of bourgeois parliamentary rule. But much more could have been achieved had there been a genuine Marxist leadership.

The dominant wing of the Chinese Communist Party has pushed through capitalist counter-reforms in the Chinese economy over the past couple of decades, achieving immense economic growth but also devastating effects on the conditions of the workers. Here we publish an interesting letter by an anonymous group of “veteran CCP members, veteran cadres, veteran military personnel and intellectuals” who are opposed to this course.

With Iraq as the focus of world opinion, Canada, Germany, France and Italy are quietly conducting an imperialist war in Afghanistan. The recent deaths of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan highlight the need to oppose the intervention.

Last Saturday the biggest general strike ever was held in the Pakistani held Kashmir. What used to be the main base towns of the Islamic Fundamentalists are now being taken over by the Marxists. The most significant aspect of this strike was that it was without violence or destruction. Above all, this general strike shows the rising force and strength of revolutionary Marxism in Kashmir.

The struggle against privatisation is heating up in Pakistan. Today, all the major papers contained articles and reports on Comrade Manzoor’s magnificent intervention in the National Assembly against the privatisation of Pakistan Steel Mills.

Nepal has entered its third week of a revolutionary crisis. The people of Nepal have once again taken the road of revolution, including two weeks of demonstrations and an indefinite general strike, taking their destiny into their own hands in an attempt to bring down the King and transform society.